Russia's less COVID-19 cases or information lockdown?

Russian President Vladimir Putin has claimed that the country has managed to curb the spread of coronavirus as it has fewer cases compared to other countries but scepticism looms around the credibility of testing facilities and information lockdown.

Hyderabad: Despite sharing a long border with the worst coronavirus-hit China, Russia has reported merely 438 infected cases and one death that raises questions as either Moscow is responding well to tackle the pandemic or it is locking down information?

President Vladimir Putin has claimed that the country has managed to curb the spread of coronavirus. Experts believe that the Moscow's far early approaches and measure played a key role to slow the spread of the virus as the country had sealed its borders with China on January 30 and had set up quarantine zones earlier.

Moscow also developed its massive testing facilities that are required to detect the spread of the virus.

Russia's state consumer watchdog Rospotrebnadzor on Saturday said that it had run more than 1,56,000 coronavirus tests in total. By comparison, according to Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) figures, the United States only picked up the pace in testing at the beginning of March, while Russia said that it has been testing en masse since early February, including in airports, focusing on travellers from Iran, China, and South Korea, CNN reported.

But scepticism looms around the credibility of testing facilities and information lockdown as on social media, the country's citizens have raised concerns over nations' history of coverups -- Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe in 1986, HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980s.

Putin himself addressed the concerns about the statistics on Wednesday, saying the government might not have the full picture but is not covering up the numbers as people sometimes do not report it and also they don't know that they are sick, CNN said.